21 replies to this topic

[thefirstimmortal]

Those Who Forget History are Condemned to Relive It

[thefirstimmortal]

Many Americans still believe the Food and Drug Administration protects their health. The misconception exists because most people don't know or remember the FDA's sordid history.

[thefirstimmortal]

The FDA is an incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy and has caused millions of humans to needlessly suffer and die, and will continue to do so in the future.

[thefirstimmortal]

The concept of life extension lies beyond the boundaries of therapeutic categories in the limited minds of government bureaucrats who are satisfied with their limited lifespans. This would not be worrisome were it not for the fact that it can lead to murderous constriction of the lifespan ambitions of those with more knowledge and imagination than the bureaucrats.

[thefirstimmortal]

The US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) refused to include life-extension within its treatment categories refusing to acknowledge that aging is a disease. For the FDA, everything that is not acknowledged is prohibited. In imposing its narrow-minded rules upon the lives of others, the FDA has waged a long and vicious battle against many companies.

[thefirstimmortal]

The Life Extension Foundation was founded by Saul Kent, a science journalist with an intense desire to find means of slowing aging -- and ultimately of ending death. LEF studied scientific literature for evidence of life-extending properties of vitamins and other nutrients. The results of these researches were published in a magazine (currently LIFE EXTENSION) and made available as products through mail-order sales. Saul Kent has remained President, but Vice-President William Faloon has effectively acted as CEO after Saul began founding other new companies devoted to life-extension.

Shortly before opening-time on the morning of February 26, 1987 twenty-five armed Federal Drug Administration (FDA) agents & US marshalls smashed thorough the glass doors of the Life Extension Foundation store, simultaneously raiding the nearby warehouse in Florida. With drawn guns, the agents lined LEF employees against the wall while seizing products, literature, documents, computers and personal effects, more than 80% of which were not within the authority of the search warrant.

Having lost most of their product inventory, LEF principals Saul Kent & Bill Faloon were facing 5 to 80 years in prison. All the attorneys they consulted recommended a guilty plea as the only possible means of reducing prison time. Instead, Kent and Faloon fought back both in the courts and through political action. A Political Coordinator's Office was established at LEF. LEF members (numbering less than 5,000) cooperated with letters, FAXes and phone calls to political leaders.

On January 9, 1991 the FDA raided the LEF Arizona Shipping Office with the complicity of the Arizona Board of Pharmacy. A permanent embargo was placed against all future shipments of 42 LEF products, including Life Extension Mix and Coenzyme-Q10. Fifteen days after the embargo, LEF lawyers handed a 300 page lawsuit to the Attorney General of Arizona, who promptly ordered the Pharmacy Board to lift the embargo. The Pharmacy Board Director agreed that his agents would take no future actions on behalf of the FDA without investigating matters themselves first.

The FDA then threatened that Kent & Faloon would become the target of criminal indictments that would "destroy their lives forever" and were told to plead guilty of crimes against the state. Kent and Faloon responded with a lawsuit against the FDA in a Florida District Court seeking an injunction against discriminating prosecution.

On November 7, 1991 Kent & Faloon were arrested and thrown into an 8 by 8 Fort Lauderdale jail cubicle containing several men charged with drug related crimes. Several hours later they were taken handcuffed before a magistrate who informed them that they were charged with 28 criminal counts, including conspiracy to sell unapproved drugs. After more hours in jail, they were released on $825,000 bail each.

Kent & Faloon retaliated by filing motions attacking the legal and constitutional foundation of the indictment. They charged that the FDA had illegally obtained the search warrant and had illegally seized many items not on the warrant. They also filed a motion charging that they were being selectively prosecuted by the FDA, because AIDS Buyer's Clubs similarly informed their members
of the FDA policy of allowing importation of drugs for personal use.

Despite continued threats of more FDA indictments that could put Kent & Faloon in jail for the rest of their lives, LEF became the first company to offer pharmaceutical-grade Melatonin in the United States in 1992.

In 1995 the FDA began exerting strong pressure to bring its lengthy legal fight against the Life Extension Foundation to trial. The FDA told Kent & Faloon that in exchange for a guilty plea they would not have to go to prison and could continue doing business on a more limited basis. The FDA wanted to censor the contents of LIFE EXTENSION magazine and probably intended to "regulate" LEF by limiting the products they could sell. Instead of pleading guilty, Kent & Faloon filed a new battery of legal motions, escalated their political attacks on the FDA and began extensive preparations for their trial.

In November 1995, the FDA dropped all charges except the charge of "obstruction of justice" against Saul Kent. In February, 1996 even this charge was dropped. It was the first time in the history of the FDA that the agency had given up on a criminal indictment against a political opponent.

[thefirstimmortal]

Beyond all this lies a larger question: Do we live in an enlightened society? Some would say it depends on the morality we enforce on the population. I have a different measure: Our enlightenment is dependent on how we treat our visionaries. If people have new ideas or outlooks, do we harass them and fear the changes they bring? Or do we let them freely prove their worth?

We have a mixed score on this measure, I think. In the computer industry, we let Steve Jobs and Alan Kay have free rein. They proceeded to revolutionize their work and much of our society as well. In the medical profession our visionaries are Jonathan Wright, Micheal West and Julian Whittaker. They have the insight and the skill to revolutionize much of modern medicine. For these people, our government seems to have nothing but scorn and harassment. The costs for these actions will be large, and they will fall on all of us.

[thefirstimmortal]

The FDA clearly has become the attack-dog tool of the AMA and pharmacy industry, and many FDA field agents are on record as stating that the agency is out to "destroy the health food and nutritional supplements industries".

And that is precisely what they are trying to do. The FDA wants to control not only the marketing of products, but also what is said in speech or print about health matters. They have vowed to "crack down" even on scientific meetings and conferences which present findings "unacceptable" to FDA policies, and this is no idle threat.

The FDA is the closest thing to a domestic Gestapo-type police force in the USA, and their power is growing; new alliances are being cemented between the FDA, IRS, DEA, FTC, Customs and Postal Services, HHS and other government agencies, to "combat the growing menace of health fraud".

[thefirstimmortal]

"Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship...denying equal privileges. All such laws are un-American and despotic..." Benjamin Rush, Physician, Signer of Declaration of Independence

[thefirstimmortal]

Once Again, Those Who Forget History are Condemned to Relive It

[thefirstimmortal]

Recently, the FDA announced plans to try and "regulate" (read: suppress) the free flow of information on "unapproved" healing methods on the internet. As always, they want to control what is said, and by whom, on health matters.

[stemcellcloning]

Beyond all this lies a larger question: Do we live in an enlightened society?

No we do not society is a great huddled mass of idiots, generally. And I am disgusted to be among it often.

However those of us the have our own beliefs and are intelligent enough to explore them will. Regardless of what we are approved or allowed to do.

The event of disapproval though or making illegal does slow progress down, in that open government and corporate support would cease.

But this would never halt the process especially when it regards health, medicine and life extension or improvement.

Do not worry those that do not support such endeavours will soon embrace the fate they long for.

[thefirstimmortal]

No we do not society is a great huddled mass of idiots, generally. And I am disgusted to be among it often.

However those of us the have our own beliefs and are intelligent enough to explore them will. Regardless of what we are approved or allowed to do.

The event of disapproval though or making illegal does slow progress down, in that open government and corporate support would cease.

But this would never halt the process especially when it regards health, medicine and life extension or improvement.

Do not worry those that do not support such endeavours will soon embrace the fate they long for.

They will.

[thefirstimmortal]

The FDA'S History is one of incompetence, fraud, deceit and the continuous striving for more power. Over the past 25 years, the Food and Drug Administration has sought to gain authoritarian control that Congress never intended it to have.

[thefirstimmortal]

The FDA launched a disinformation campaign to deceive Congress into believing that the agency needs to "protect" the public from health information on the Internet. The FDA is seeking ten million tax dollars a year to attack alternative health and pharmacy websites. If the FDA convinces Congress to give it the power and money to do this, American consumers will be denied access to innovative therapies, and will be forced to pay a good deal more for the nutrient and drug therapies the FDA allows them to buy over the Internet.

[thefirstimmortal]

One of the FDA's proposals is to be able to fine Internet pharmacies $500,000 every time they dispense a drug without a prescription authorized by the agency. With this kind of excessive fining power, the FDA will be able to bankrupt any online pharmacy it targets. To make it easy for them to shut down large numbers of websites, the FDA wants the power to issue subpoenas without first obtaining a court order, a totalitarian tactic the American public revolted against when the agency proposed it in 1990. Finally, the FDA says it wants to set up a "rapid response team" to identify, investigate and prosecute websites. In other words, the FDA is seeking to establish an army of cyberspace storm troopers to enable it to shut down large numbers of websites quickly.

[thefirstimmortal]

The FDA is using the free-flowing popularity of the Internet in a ploy to deceive Congress into appropriating ten million tax dollars a year to fund an unconstitutional witch hunt against free speech. The new powers the FDA is seeking are blatantly un-American and resemble the kinds of police-state tactics employed by totalitarian regimes such as communist China.

[thefirstimmortal]

A flagrant example of FDA deception can be found a past attempt to control the Internet. The FDA had identified one person who died after obtaining Viagra from a web pharmacy without a prescription. The FDA used this one death as an example of why the FDA needed to impose dictatorial power over all health websites. One problem with this position is that, as of November 1998, at least 130 Americans died from taking Viagra legally prescribed by their doctors. The FDA approved Viagra as being safe, even though many Americans have died when the drug has been legally prescribed. The FDA failed to detect the lethal side effects of Viagra, yet it was seeking gestapo-like power to attack any Internet health company it wishes to, without due process.

[thefirstimmortal]

Why Internet Regulation is Doomed to Fail. The powers the FDA is seeking are unconstitutional, and the agency has neither the competence nor the integrity to police the Internet, but even if it did, it would be impractical for the agency to do so. There are currently an estimated 8,000 health sites on the Internet. If Congress gives the FDA $10 million a year, the best the agency could do is shut down a couple of hundred sites a year. Within a few years, the FDA would create a litigation monster whose appetite would far exceed their $10 million annual budget. The FDA would be bogged down in a quagmire of judicial proceedings, while thousands of new health websites would be springing up that the agency would be at an utter loss to control.

The end result of the FDA's war against the free flow of information on the Internet would be tens of millions of tax dollars wasted, with less so-called consumer "protection" than exists today.

[thefirstimmortal]

The charade the FDA is parading before Congress is that they need more money and stricter laws to regulate e-commerce. The facts are that the FDA already has the regulatory structure to "protect" the consumer on the Internet. Much of what the FDA wants is already covered by existing Federal and State law, but the agency is seeking to add another bureaucratic layer of law and money to suppress the dissemination of health information.

An Alternative Proposal The FDA has its own website (http://www.fda.gov/). For a fraction of the cost of becoming the health police of the Internet, the agency could post its own evaluation of alternative health websites that it thought were promoting fraudulent or dangerous products. Americans would then be free to make their own decisions about whether to believe what the FDA says about health websites. However, the FDA has no interest in trying to persuade Americans with evidence. It wants (and has always wanted) authoritarian powers and as much money as possible from Congress because it is a political organization rather than a scientific one. As a result, FDA suppression of information has been, historically, the leading cause of death in the United States, while adverse reactions to FDA approved drugs is currently the 4th-to-6th leading cause of death. Clearly, the FDA lacks the constitutional authority, the competence, the integrity or the scientific credibility to be given additional power and money to police the Internet.

[Lazarus Long]

The FDA has become almost more about profit protection than quality control, more about market manipulation than encouraging and ensuring the development of new ideas.

The FDA is exemplary of what happens when a good idea goes bad.

[thefirstimmortal]

The FDA has become almost more about profit protection than quality control, more about market manipulation than encouraging and ensuring the development of new ideas. 

The FDA is exemplary of what happens when a good idea goes bad.

Bingo